All The Pieces (Pieces of Lies 3)

by Angela Richardson

  Then Clint squeezed my hand. “There he is.” Pointing to the other side of the fountain. James had wandered off so quickly. He was talking to a man, whose face I could only partially see through the crowd. The dread and panic that I was trying to keep at bay surfaced once more. I took off towards the other side, Clint following close behind. When I finally reached the area where we saw James, he was still there but now standing all on his own. My arms went around him, pulling him in tight to my body.

  “Mummy, mummy stop. What are you doing?”

  “James Joshua Riley, you scared me! Don’t ever wander off like that again. Never, ever again! Alright.”

  He squirmed, trying to wriggle out of my hold. “It’s okay mummy. I was talking to a nice man. He even gave me a coin.”

  I internally thanked the gods for the friendly folk that still walked the earth. My moment of fear slowly subsiding. I tried to sound calm and happy as James’s little eyes searched mine to make sure he wasn’t in trouble. “That’s wonderful James,” I said. “But you shouldn’t be talking to strangers. We’ve spoken about this before. Never ever speak to or go anywhere with a stranger. Okay. Do you understand me James?”

  “Yes mummy. I’m sorry mummy.” I think I must have sounded more panicked than I realized.

  “It’s okay James,” Clint spoke up, his hand going on his back. “But mummy is right. Never talk to strangers. It’s not safe buddy.”

  I pulled James off me so I could look into his confused green eyes. “I’m sorry if I sound upset sweetie. I just would hate if anything happened to you.” He hugged me again, knowing I needed it. My heart rate slowed, and I came back from the feeling of terror building inside me. I tried to sound sweet and bring some happiness back into our visit to the Trevi Fountain. “So...do you want to toss the coin the nice man gave you into the fountain now James?”

  James shook his head. “No, I want to keep it mummy. Can I keep it please?”

  “Oh but sweetie. We are here to toss our coins into the fountain. Why do you want to keep it?”

  “Because the nice man told me I will need it one day. That I should hold on to it. That he’ll come back for it when I’m big like you.”

  I looked to Clint, who was looking at me with the same wild expression. Our eyes immediately darting all around us.

  “He did?” I asked, still searching the crowd with my eyes. Knowing what to look for and at the same time, not knowing what I would find.

  “Yes, he said it was a special coin just for me. So can I keep it mummy...please?”

  Inside my head, the voice was screaming “NO, NO, NO!” This wasn’t possible. I’m just being paranoid. It’s not what I think.

  I knelt down in front of James. Clint followed me, kneeling down as well. “Why don’t you show mummy this special coin, and then we’ll decide if we should keep it?” I said, trying my best to sound calm.

  James plopped the little coin into my hand, and Clint and I both gasped at what we saw. It felt like it was burning a hole in my palm. The feeling of anonymity and safety, all but gone. Just like that. In a blink of an eye. I had one of those time stilling moments. The tourists moving around me became frozen in their movements, like someone had hit pause on them in a movie. My heart was thumping so loud in my ears that I found myself forgetting to breathe. I almost choked trying to suck the air in through my nose. I couldn’t hear the world around me as the realization hit home that it wasn’t over. It would never be over.

  Had we gotten too comfortable? Had they always known where I was? Where he was? Was our new life all an illusion? Am I in a dream?

  They had been watching us. Watching my son. Waiting for him to grow and get older so he could become one of them. Kyser Harkin had been right. They lurked in the shadows. They were the nightmares we couldn’t escape. And they could, as I saw with my own two eyes, turn our world upside down.

  I stared at the coin one more time before tossing it as far away as I could from my beautiful little family. James whimpered as I did, not wanting to let the coin go.

  It was a coin, but not just any kind of coin. It was a coin...

  From the Lappell.

  THE END.

  EXTRA DELETED SCENE.

  Norah’s cousin’s wedding.

  THE START OF AN IDEA.

  (At the end of Pieces of Lies - Book 1.)

  I stood on that balcony watching the space between me and Norah grow further and further apart. She had chosen him. She was chasing after him. The ‘him’ being Clint Weston. I couldn’t believe that we finally had our moment, but it passed us by like something caught in the wind.

  I touched my lips, remembering the kiss we shared. I couldn’t forget our kiss, even if I tried. Our kiss, to me, was something out of movie. It was a kiss filled with passion, excitement, friendship and memories. It was a kiss that could easily be filled with more...become more...be everything that the word ‘love’ encompasses. But as much as I felt our connection in that kiss, I also felt a stifling distance. Norah’s heart had opened up to someone else in a way I’d never seen before. When she used to tell me about Samuel, there was indeed a burning desire in the way she spoke about him, although I never believed that he was ultimately what she needed. I didn’t feel that Samuel would be her destiny. But now with Clint, she was all starry eyes, upside down rainbow smiles, and there was something cosmic in the way she moved. She had...changed.

  How did such a short time of dating Weston over shadow years and years of our friendship? How did it so quickly smother that low burn that was always between us? Can true love work that quickly? From a brief encounter? Is it really like the books claim it to be? NO. I refuse to believe that what I felt when we first met could be anything but friendship. There was more in our connection and comradery. We were in sync. We were soul mates. We could confess to each other our deepest secrets and fears. We could lean on each other for strength and for guidance. We could make each other laugh and we could make each other cry. We could finish each other’s sentences and fight about nothing just for the sake of it. Yes, what we have is special. What we have is more than these fleeting feelings she has for Clint Weston. I mean, I have loved her since I was thirteen, and here at McLaren was supposed to be my opportunity to claim what we had always pushed aside for the sake of friendship. It was finally our time to become united. She wasn’t supposed to be with Clint. Not the guy she met at that party. But then again, I was never supposed to have taken her to that party to begin with. She should never have been involved from the start. My last minute decision had changed the one path I thought we were on together and split it in two. It was a night that felt like a pinpoint in time because Norah had finally gotten to see who I had really become since leaving New York. I was a shadow of my former personality. A somewhat distorted copy of her teenage best friend. Something or someone darker. And she had seen it because I let my feelings towards her and my goal with the Lappell win over what was the right thing to do.

  I can still feel the crippling shame of my rash emotional decision for that night. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about the gaping hole in my heart when she wasn’t around, and the rage that constantly simmered under my skin. I was however, smart enough to use that controlled darkness and channel it towards my goal in finding a way to get back a lifestyle that I once had when I was happy. A life with money, prestige and Norah. There weren’t many rules I wouldn’t break to get back the time in my life when Norah and I were the closest. When my parents were alive. But that was a time in my life in which I had both wealth and status. And what better way to gain that lifestyle than to be accepted into the highly unattainable Lappell secret society. They were going to serve me well. They would open a lot of doors, and offer up to me, quite literally on a silver platter, a lot of connections that I could use to my advantage. The Lappell were a means to an end.

  “Joshua.” The deep sound from over my shoulders sent shudders along my limbs, right up to my eyes that burst open. I turned around, a little taken b
ack by his presence before me, but quickly stood tall, trying to appear confident in my stance as he approached.

  “Mr. Rossi.” I said, attempting to match the husky depth in his voice, knowing a strong deep voice was as good as a firm handshake. It had to have presence to get respect. He nodded, seeming pleased with how I acknowledged him. Probably because he could also sense my nervousness and could smell my fear, which I could admit, was an astute observation.

  “Have you seen Lenorah?” he asked, moving towards the terrace railing, his curious brown eyes peering over the balcony as he waited for me to respond. My strong steady voice suddenly changed to something I knew would sound squeaky and feminine. His very presence could unravel all my control and turn me into a vulnerable little girl.

  “She went to make up with Clint.” I informed him. I didn’t want to tell him where she went, but being honest was probably a better option in this situation then being caught out lying to his face. I watched to see how he would react to his only daughter fleeing a family wedding and chasing after a guy who had recently lied to her about his involvement in their relationship.

  His chin tilted down, his lips moved back and forth like he was talking without talking, but then he nodded and stared out into the darkness once more. If he was debating about what to do regarding her sudden departure, he was keeping it internal. You couldn’t read his face.

  Mr. Rossi then gazed up at the sky the way Norah did only minutes beforehand when she was in front of me. I watched him as his eyes studied the moon. His mouth parting slightly at its grand appearance. I had always compared Norah to her mother having seen many pictures before. There was no mistaking where she had gotten her beauty from, but as I watched Mr. Rossi take in the glory of the night like it was art, I also saw Norah and the way she also looked at the world. There was a part of this man and who he was that was also a part of Norah and the woman she had become. Perhaps I needed to take a closer look in how Mr. Rossi operated. I knew what he did and what he was capable of. I had seen it first hand, and despite his obvious flaws and the horror I know Norah had witnessed in her teenage years, she had never once stopped loving him.

  Mr. Rossi breathed heavily, like he had come to decision about what he should do about Norah, and then looked at me again. I was still standing in the same spot staring, waiting for him to speak. I felt immobile while he was there, like I needed his permission that I could move or be excused. It was odd how much control he had even without speaking. He grinned at me and reached into his coat jacket and pulled out two long Cuban cigars. He motioned one towards me, and I shook my head. I had never been a smoker and I didn’t have any intention of starting tonight. His grin changed, his mouth forming a hard line as his hand holding the cigars motioned towards me again. This time, I took a cigar with hasty fingers. “I mustn’t offend the mobster,” I thought to myself.

  Mr. Rossi retrieved a cigar cutter and then a lighter from his coat pocket. He cut both ends of our cigars and then lit them. I watched him handle his cigar, waiting to see what he would do next. I knew there must have been an easy way to smoke a cigar and make it look like I had done it before. I was a fast learner after all. You only needed to show me something once and it was etched into my brain for life.

  He sucked on his cigar and started puffing on it like it was the most natural action in the world. The smoke that erupted from his mouth, hung around his head like dense fog. Now against the dark night sky, with the smoke’s lingering effect around his head, he suddenly resembled that of an evil god. The image was scary enough to force me to start taking quick puffs, mimicking him, trying my best to look like a seasoned pro. I instantly began coughing up a lung like a kid who had tried smoking for the first time. The only difference being the fact, that by age, I was no longer a kid. It was then Mr. Rossi’s smile returned to his face, and his body seemed to relax as he leant on the terrace railing looking entertained by the knowledge I was a virgin cigar smoker.

  His shoulders became straight, turning towards me and then he shrugged. “So...just like that?” He said, staring at his Cuban’s red burning tip on its end.

  I cleared my throat trying to catch my breath, and inhaled sharply with as much clean air as I could take in. “Huh?” I asked him, clearly confused and stunned by his question as I breathed out. I didn’t want to have to ask him to elaborate, but I was genuinely uncertain about what he was making reference to. Although I suddenly wished that I had been a lot more articulate in my response than to use the word ‘huh.’ I still wanted to make a good impression, at the very least.

  “With my daughter I mean.” His free hand moved in a waving motion towards the door. The same door Norah made her escape.

  “Just like that. You let her go?”

  I swallowed hard at what just came out of his mouth. I had known this man since I was thirteen, and in all that time, he had never once asked me about my feelings or anything resembling my intentions towards his daughter. I couldn’t even form sentences in my head because of the shock. I knew I had to be careful in how I approached the topic, because to Mr. Rossi, there was nothing more important on this planet than his daughter.

  My voice was all soft and sad as I choked out a response. “I can’t force her to be with me, sir.” Obviously he wasn’t oblivious to my feelings towards Norah. He pushed off the railing as he moved closer, wanting to make sure I could hear him better, dropping his face lower so that the conversation would be for our ears only.

  “You know Joshua, when I first met Lenorah’s mother, there was another man in the picture. A man who said he loved her more than me. A man, she may have even actually loved more than me.”

  I watched his dark brown eyes turn almost black at the thoughts and images passing through his mind. It looked like a very painful memory. One he didn’t like to remember. I coughed again, the smoke still suffocating me like two hands around my neck. But I was going take this opportunity to ask him the most important questions I may ever need answers to.

  “So, what did you do? How did you win her over?” I stuttered, breathing heavily as I pushed the questions out.

  “Oh, that,” he began. “That was the easy part.”

  He took slow steps closer to me, and leaned in like he was going to whisper a secret. He looked both ways before he spoke in a low, yet terrifying voice that chilled me to my very bones.

  “I killed him.”

  The words “I killed him” felt like they were being carved into my skin on my head, like an imaginary tattoo. Killed? Was he being serious? Is that really how he captured the love of his life?

  The eerie silence from those three words caused my heart to beat frantically against my chest. That, combined with the smoke, made me want to be sick. The sense of dread swirling inside me further created a feeling of light headedness as I tried decipher the true meaning to his words. Could he have really done something like that for love? Where his wife was concerned, had he become the last man standing because he had taken the other player out?

  A million different thoughts and ideas consumed me. Ideas that should have never crossed over into a mind like mine. Ideas that formed and then mutated to become maybe’s and possibilities. Ideas that shouldn’t be entertained or put into motion. Ideas that were wrong, but felt right because I could use them to my advantage in my own quest for love.

  Then Joe started laughing at me. Guttural laughing that clouded my new ideas and brought me back up from the darkness I had mentally slipped into. My stunned face had not moved a muscle. He pat me hard on the back and shook his head like he was joking. He kept laughing until he was certain I understood that he wasn’t being serious. I faked a laugh along with him like I believed it was a joke, but there was something in the way he said “I killed him” that felt real. It sounded like it was the absolute truth. Like the extent of his love for that women took him to the edge and back. He would have done anything for her, and anything to have her. There are certain tells you learn about people that you are taught in the Lappell wit
h facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, and let me tell you, when Mr. Joe Rossi had said he had killed the man who was competition for Norah’s mother, he was not being funny. It was no joke. It was the most serious sounding three words I had ever heard. I couldn’t read him before when he was assessing Norah’s actions, but in this moment and in that chilling phrase, he was an open book.

  And in the commotion of emotions, all I could see was one thing in my head. It was one clear reality that was shining brightly in my hopeful eyes. Mr. Rossi had won. He married the love of his life and had Norah because he did what he had to do. And that in itself told me that maybe there was something in the way he worked.

  He pat my back one more time, raising his eyebrows, and then walked back into the wedding hall. I watched him walk away, thinking about what he had said and what it actually meant for him and for me. There was only one conclusion I could reach. My heart finding a new vision and a new hope for my future. Mr. Rossi had just taught me that yes, you can have the girl of your dreams...if you are willing to sell your soul to the devil. And the truth of the matter was, that I would pay any price, for Norah’s love.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would love to thank my family and my friends for all their encouragement they have shown me through the Pieces of Lies series. I would also love to express my gratitude and appreciation to the bloggers and readers who have been so positive and supportive with the story and my writing. Sincerest and kindest thanks to you all.

  For those of you who are upset with my decision in the final book, please understand that I felt that it was the only path Norah’s story could take. The collision of worlds had to have a casualty. Actions had to have consequences. Paths and feelings had changed from all the lies and deception. The end had been put into motion from the very beginning. It all came full circle.